Griff paced along the front ranks of Cobra, glancing to the roof of the Marine deck, hands behind his back. He stopped in front of 6th squad.
“Mister Forge, I have extra work for you today. Take sixth squad through this simulation once again and take these squad leaders with you. Then Cobra Company will repeat the simulation while sixth squad grabs some VR and R. Do you get me, Cobra?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Jack shouted out along with Cobra Company.
8
Jack felt a renewed confidence in his ability as he climbed out of the VR pod this time. He’d taken the other squad leaders of Cobra Company through the simulation and this time, they had infiltrated the cave system and destroyed a mass of Chitin soldiers with strategically-placed explosives, some well-aimed pulse rifle fire, and a lot of close quarters electron bayonet work.
“When it comes to the real thing, we won’t know what we are going to find in such a place. Better to check it out first,” Jack said to the squad leaders as they came out of their pods.
“I heard you made a habit of annoying your commanding officers,” Navidi said. “But you got Griff on your good side.”
Jack took a sip of water from a cold bottle and then poured a slug over his head. He wiped water, sweat, and the stress of a long day of training away. “I won’t blindly follow an officer if I think there’s a better way. And a good officer won’t ignore a Marine if they have a better plan. Griff seems like a good officer to me, so far.”
“How did a cocky scroat like you make it to the Marines?” Navidi asked.
Jack offered the bottle to the 1st squad leader. “I failed my midterms.”
Navidi took the bottle and laughed. Taking a sip, he looked Jack in the eye. “Good to have you in Cobra Company. Guess you got some VR and R coming to you now?”
“No,” Jack said. “I’ve got someone to go and see.”
The corridors were empty. Only the occasional creaking bulkhead or squeak of strained pipe behind the corridor panels broke the silence. The way to the med bay was becoming familiar to Jack. He wandered around the maze of empty corridors, hardly noticing where he was going until he came upon the wide double-doors of the med bay.
Inside, a nurse stood at the nurse’s station. A person in the black jacket of Fleet Intelligence stood, leaning against the desktop and toward the nervous nurse.
Then Jack recognized Agent Visser, and he felt a sudden pang of guilt. Commander Finch had been a bad officer, Jack had not liked the man, but he did not want to see Finch get killed. Then Jack felt a sudden rush of nerves. It crackled over his skin like a wave of burning hot pinpricks. The agent was still investigating the disappearance of Commander Finch and knew his knowledge of events leading to that officer’s disappearance could land him in trouble and could land his friend on the gallows.
Visser turned around and Jack thought it was almost as if she had detected his hidden nervousness and guilt.
“Jack Forge,” Visser said, squaring up in front of him. “What brings you to the med bay?”
The nurse glanced at Jack. She seemed grateful to have been let off Visser’s hook, but sorry that Jack was now firmly on it. She averted her eyes and buried herself in work.
Visser seemed to study Jack. Fleet Intelligence agents were the most suspicious people in the fleet, if not the entire system. They suspected everyone of something. Jack knew Agent Visser suspected him of holding back information.
Jack stood his ground. He told himself to relax. He tried to convince himself that Visser had no evidence that would condemn him. He drew himself up to his full height and stood confidently. Inside, he felt like he was withering like a lush plant under the fierce heat of a supernova.
“Sir, I’m here to check in on my friend,” Jack said. His voice broke slightly. He knew it was because he’d been shouting orders in the heat of a simulated battle for the last few hours and then had not spoken a word for the last thirty minutes, but to anyone listening, particularly a Fleet Intelligence agent, it sounded like nervousness and guilt.
“Reyes is still in a coma,” Visser said, still studying him.
Jack had been ready for this and made an effort to not give away any hint of emotion at the mention of Reyes’s name. “Not Sarah,” he said coolly, “Sam. Sam Torent. Squad Leader of Sixth squad.”
“I thought you were leader of sixth squad now,” Visser said.
Krav it all, Jack thought, Visser knows everything. “Yes, sir,” Jack said. “I’ve just been promoted today.”
“Carry on, Marine,” Visser said and returned her attention to the nurse, who quivered under the attention.
Jack walked along the corridor. Through the clear composite panels, he could see the Marine guards still standing in front of Reyes’s door. Jack averted his gaze from that distant compartment, fearing Visser would see him looking and read some critical and condemning evidence in it. Instead, he looked for Torent.
Sam Torent was propped up in a bunk cover in white sheets, looking at his new right arm. The prosthetic limb had not yet been covered in synthetic skin and Jack could see the black composite sinews that made it. Torent was turning his arm this way and that, watching it move. He clenched and unclenched his fist, as if hypnotized by it.
“Sam?” Jack opened the compartment door. “Good to see you in one piece.”
Torent looked up at Jack and gave a half-smile before returning his attention to his prosthetic arm.
“They just attached it. It feels strange,” Torent said. He spread his fingers and turned his hand at the wrist. He bent his elbow and then straightened his arm.
“You can feel it?” Jack said, stepping closer. He watched as the composite sinews stretched and twisted across each other.
“Yeah, kind of,” Torent said, studying the arm’s movement. “But it feels artificial. Like the difference between a battle and a simulation. Simulation seems real, but you know it’s not.” Torent put the arm through its full range of movement, watching all the while, then he looked at Jack. “Throw me something.”
Jack looked around the compartment for anything he could throw. In his pocket was his watch. It was still without a case and the clockwork mechanism had stopped. It was wrapped in leather to prevent any damage to the delicate mechanism. Jack held it up for Torent to see.
“No, not that, Jacky. I don’t want to break that.”
Jack put the watch carefully away and then spotted a water bottle on the small table next to Torent. He picked it up. “This okay?” Jack asked and backed away as far from Torent as he could go. He held up the bottle, ready to throw, and waited for the nod from Torent.
Torent nodded and Jack gently pitched it to Torent. The black arm snatched the bottle out of the air, the fist clenching tight and crushing it.
“Krav it all,” Torent said. He shook his hand and tried to release the bottle, but his fist remained clenched tight. Water leaked out and ran down Torent’s arm. He shook his arm to shake the bottle away from his grip, but only succeeded in splashing water everywhere.
Jack almost laughed but then saw the distress on Torent’s face. He let the arm drop next to him on the bed.
“Stupid, kravin arm,” Torent said. “I’ll never get this thing to work.”
Jack stepped up and took hold of one of Torent’s fingers. He peeled it away from the bottle. It came away easily and then the others unfurled, releasing the bottle. It fell from Torent’s hand and clattered to the floor.
“They said I can rejoin the company in a few days, or as soon as I can work the new arm.”
“You’ll get back in no time, but what’s the rush?”
“Oh, I see.” Torent reached over with his left arm and tapped the squad leader’s badge on Jack’s chest. “You’ve finally got my job and you don’t want to give it back, is it?”
Jack looked down at the badge. “Oh, that,” he said. “Just keeping it clean for you is all.”
“I’m sure you are doing more than that. So, are you making life difficult for the new c
ommander yet?”
Jack laughed. “You know me,” he said.
Jack looked through the clear panels of med bay walls to where Sarah Reyes lay. He could just make her out in her bunk.
“I heard the doctors say she could wake up at any time,” Torent said.
Picking the crushed bottle up off the floor, Jack grunted.
“That agent will probably want to speak to her as soon as she does.”
Jack looked at Torent with a suddenness that gave away his unease.
“Visser already spoke to me about it.” Torent held up his black sinewy arm and flexed the artificial muscles. “She asked me what happened to Finch down on that moon. I told her what you told me.” Torent looked at Jack. “I told her you said he was gone. You said, Finch is gone. And I told her we were deep in the krav and it was all a bit crazy down there. I told her exactly what you told me.” Torent fixed Jack with a stare. Jack knew what it meant. Torent didn’t know what happened to Finch, nor did he care, but he did care what happened to his friend. “I told her I wish I knew more. You know I wouldn’t keep a secret from the Fleet Intelligence. You know I’m not as clever as you, Jacky, but I’m not so stupid as to try and fool an agent.”
Jack looked over at Reyes, nodding in agreement.
“I guess Visser has interviewed you?” Torent nudged Jack in the hip with his new arm. He miscalculated and hit Jack hard.
Jack winced at the sudden, unexpected pain.
“Sorry, Jacky,” Torent said. “But that pain will be nothing if she wakes up and her story is different than yours.” Torent laid back on his pillow and closed his eyes. “I don’t know what happened to Finch. Does she? They are going to ask her.”
Jack threw the broken bottle in a small trash basket next to Torent’s bunk. “I hope she’ll be alright, Sam.”
Torent nestled into his pillow. “She’ll be fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Why?” Jack said, looking down at the resting Torent.
“Because you’ve got to try and lead that squad of ill-mannered, ill-disciplined Marines they call sixth squad.” Torent opened an eye and looked up at Jack.
Jack smiled. “I’ll be fine. I hear the worst of them are not in the squad anymore. One is in med bay and the other has been made squad leader.”
“They always make the worst Marine squad leader.” Torent let out a big yawn.
“Don’t hurt yourself with that arm, Sam.” Jack walked toward the door.
“Don’t ruin my squad. I want it back, you hear?”
“See you on the Marine deck.” Jack turned to Torent, but he was already sleeping and snoring like a cow. Jack looked along the med bay. He needed to speak to Reyes. He had to keep her safe from Visser.
9
Jack walked away from the med bay and through the corridors of the Scorpio. A group of crewmen and a young officer were throwing dice in one corridor. Jack stepped around them and ignored their boisterous shouting. Jack knew where he was going. He knew in the back of his mind that there was only one way he could save Reyes, only one person who would help. There was only one person he could trust with this. The one department the rest of the ship overlooked. The one department that knew every panel and bulkhead of the ship. And that department was now run by only one man.
Jack turned the corner and stepped up to the large doors of the maintenance hangar.
The large double-doors were open just a crack, enough for one person to step between. The edges of the doors were a ragged mess where they had been sealed and then cut open following the Chitin attack on the Scorpio during the Battle of Kratos Fuel Station. The jagged edges caught Jack’s sleeve. He felt it tug, holding him back, preventing him from finding help. The jacket ripped, only a small tear, but it was a bad sign and made Jack feel that his efforts might come to nothing, that all was already lost and if he carried on with his plan, he would suffer more than a ripped sleeve.
“Hey, Jack.” The shout echoed across the vast hangar.
There at the back, in a small pool of light at a workbench, Jack saw a tall figure, his maintenance coveralls tied by the sleeves around the waist.
“Hey, Slim. You got everything running smoothly yet?” Jack walked between the workbenches back toward his former maintenance colleague.
“Give me an hour more and the Scorpio will be the pride of the fleet, as long as you soldier boys leave her alone, that is.”
The coffee in the maintenance hangar was dark and thick, tasting of metal and composite and dirt. It was the best coffee aboard the Scorpio bar none, including the captain’s personal dispenser. Jack sat on the edge of a workbench and nursed the dirty mug in his lap. Slim leaned against the opposite bench, a hot mug in one dirty, calloused hand.
“Soldiering getting dull yet? You need to fix some conduit for excitement?” Slim slurped his coffee.
Jack looked up at the top bulkhead. The area where the Chits had cut through was repaired, panels of composite placed over the breach and welded into place.
“That was a scroat of a job,” Slim said, following Jack’s gaze. “I should have been here.” He looked into his mug.
“They would have taken you as well, Slim, and then who would keep the Scorpio flying?” Jack said. “Doyle sent you to do a job. I bet he was glad he had. He wouldn’t have wanted you...”
“And what do you know about what Doyle would have wanted?” Slim spoke with venom and anger that took Jack by surprise. Jack looked Slim in his dark eyes and took a sip of coffee.
“Do you think he’d have wanted you here?” Jack held the tall man’s stare. “Do you think you could have prevented what happened to them?”
Slim sipped his coffee and shifted his weight on the workbench. “At least she got away.” Slim jerked his head toward Reyes’s workbench. “I haven’t been to see her yet. Too kravin busy.”
“They won’t let anyone in.” Jack sipped and watched Slim for a reaction.
“Why not?”
“Fleet Intelligence wants to speak to her first.”
Slim rolled his eyes. “Intelligence,” he said with contempt. “If they put a fraction of the effort in to maintenance as they do in to those agents’ uniforms, we’d have the fleet ready to take down those kravin Chit bastards.” Slim slurped his coffee angrily.
“I need to get to her before they do, Slim.”
Slim looked over his coffee cup at Jack. “Why?” he asked suspiciously, then he shook his head. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.” He put his mug down on the bench and began tapping at a control panel on the edge. A holomap of the Scorpio appeared on the bench.
Jack jumped down and moved next to Slim. “How did you get that?” Jack said in surprise.
“Can’t do much in maintenance without detailed specs of the entire kravin ship. You tell me where they got Sarah and I’ll tell you how to get there undetected.”
“You can do that?” Jack looked into the green network of holographic lines that mapped out the Scorpio deck by deck, section by section. Every hidden panel and system, every coil, every conduit, every accelerator, compactor, fusion jet, and antimatter injector.
“What we got here is a detailed spec on every piece of the Scorpio right down to the buttons on the captain’s jacket. This is maintenance, Jack,” Slim said brightly, his arms out wide as if he’d just performed a magic trick. “Nothing happens on this ship that we can’t know about.”
Jack zoomed in on the med bay and then the compartment Reyes was being held in under guard. “Get me in there if you can, Slim. Get me in and I’ll do the rest.”
10
Bill Harts was awake. He was aware. He knew he was missing some part of himself. He knew he was different.
He recognized this place. The pink sands towering above him in the intricate branching structures could only be one place. He was back on the moon of Kratos.
The data overlay on his meat suit helmet showed him he was dehydrated, hypothermic, and exhausted. Data also showed him he was not alone.
Commander Finch was kneeling next to him. Finch reached out and took Harts’s hand, pulling him up off the floor.
“Sir, I got lost,” Harts said, looking around.
“Me too,” Finch said, but there was a hint of confusion in his voice.
“I’ve been somewhere,” Harts said. He struggled to remember. He knew he was missing a memory.
“No, Marine. We’ve been here all along. When the Leviathan was destroyed, we were concussed. It took us this long to initiate communication with the fleet.”
“Yeah,” Harts agreed uncertainly. “Have we contacted the fleet yet?”
“Have you forgotten protocol, Marine?”
“Sir, I think have, sir.” Harts stood up. His legs felt weak.
“Well, you better remember pretty quick, Marine. We’ll be back in the fleet soon and we’ll have to blend right in. Do you understand, Marine?”
The memories came back slowly. Harts answered, but with only a dim awareness of what he was doing. “Sir, yes, sir,” he said.
“Shout it out, Marine.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Harts shouted.
“You starting to remember, Marine?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Harts shouted. He was starting to remember the time before, his time in the fleet. He knew who he was, he knew where he was, but there was a gap, a darkness between then and now. He struggled to remember.
“Stop trying to remember something that hasn’t happened, Marine,” Finch shouted. “You can’t remember it. Just remember who you are and what you have to do. Do you understand?”
Harts slumped back to the floor. He felt cold. He remembered being cold. He felt confused. He remembered being confused. He felt afraid. He remembered being afraid.
“Do you get me, Marine?” Finch stooped over Harts and shouted even louder.
Jack Forge, Fleet Marine Boxed Set (Books 1 - 9) Page 21
